We Were Queens
by Victorian Asylum
Summary: Even now, they still can't escape Arcadia.


**A/N**: So I posted this on Ao3 a bit ago, and forgot to post it here. Had to remedy that.

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_So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past._

_\- _The Great Gatsby

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Chloe appears on her doorstep at three in the morning, a ghost with mangled knuckles and a broken, bleeding face. She didn't even consider that Max might be sleeping right now. She knows that she won't be. Neither of them sleep well at all. Max steps aside, lets Chloe stagger into her apartment and down the hall, dripping old blood onto the tiles as her feet trace familiar patterns to the bathroom. It's the worst kind of familiarity they've fallen into, people who have broken apart in front of each other, trampling around the pretty pieces. Shitty people doing shitty things, hoping scotch tape can hold together messy lives and messier hearts. _God, what a pair we are, _Max thinks as she follows the self-destructive beast that is Chloe back into familiar territory.

Chloe settles heavily onto the porcelain rim of the scummy bathtub that desperately needs cleaning. She pulls her hat from her head, smears blood all down her face. Her pastel purple hair is as much of a mess as she is. It changes color like the weather, subject to the flimsy desires of a woman too old and tired to care about much at all. She is black and blue all over, just looking at her hurts, new scars forming over the old, pathetic and small in the flickering bathroom light. Max doesn't ask what happens as she clears away the drying blood from her face. Chloe is too numbed to object to the rough strokes of the cloth.

Another dumb fight over territory, Max knows. One day Chloe is going to sorry ass dumped in the river with a bullet in her head if she kept fucking with other big business dealers and their selling claims. Just one more, Chloe always says, just one more and I'll have enough to get out. She's been saying that for five years. And she's just as stuck as Max is. Lost and alone in a world that doesn't need her. In a world that she doesn't want to be in. All that grandstanding, all that talk of leaving the past behind, and how does she end up? A shabby drug dealer with the shit beat out of her, in the bathroom of a washed up photographer. So much for the flimsy dreams of teenagers, all that blind optimism and those superhero complexes.

Chloe still has that scar, the one cuts across her left cheek and runs freely to the missing tip of her ear, one of the only signs that Arcadia Bay ever existed at all. A parting gift from Nathan and his gun, in their final confrontation. It certainly adds to her mysterious punk aesthetic, a hardened look to match those ragged clothes, sleepless eyes and wounded soul. All they ever do is change. Become strangers, get to know each other again, rinse and repeat. Always stuck in a loop, day after day. Max wonders how long this routine will last.

At least she's looking better now, with some of the blood cleared away. Doesn't make Max ache all over looking at the open wounds. Chloe really needs to see a doctor. The universe only knows what kind of injuries are lurking beneath purple and yellow skin. But she won't. And Max won't tell her to. She just continues to clean until Chloe does not look as if she had been thrown into a wood chipper and left to rot. After, Chloe crawls into her bed like a broken animal and collapses. Neither of them sleeps much, with their back pressed together and their hearts wandering, but it's better this way.

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The death rate after it all was staggering. Out of the entire town, only five people survived. Neither max nor Chloe knew any of the other three left.

There was a national outpouring of support. The warzone that had been the remains of Arcadia was memorialized. Funds were raised for the survivors. There were books, documentaries, interviews. It was a drama that swept the world, and the nation wept. But within two years, no one even cared anymore. They'd all moved on, because they had the luxury. Because they didn't know what Max knew.

It was like Arcadia Bay never existed at all.

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By the times Max wakes up, Chloe is gone, leaving nothing but a blood stained pillow and a half full ashtray in her wake. Max soaks the pillow case, and, after work, takes it, alongside other discarded clothes, to the laundry mat. It's nine o'clock and the place is nearly empty. For some reason, simple chores like laundry are therapeutic. It still felt out of place, doing something so domestic. By this age, Max had always figured she'd be married to some eccentric artist, off touring the globe, enjoying international fame for her moving photographs. Yet here she is, doing week old laundry, playing nurse to her sort-of-but-it's-complicated girlfriend. Well, she can reverse time. She didn't expect her life to be normal after that revelation. Just better. She thought she could be an everyday hero. She thought she could save her home town.

Max leans against one of the washing machines as her clothes tumble around the dryer. She hasn't used her ability in a while. Not since she lost her shit and broke most of the things in her house, then went back to keep them all in tact. Nothing was worth it. She cannot go back far enough to absolve her guilt. She tried. All she got was a week of seizures and permanent headaches.

Sometimes, late a night, she'll swear she hears the phone ring. She'll go to pick it up, expecting Warren or Kate. Then she'll remember that all of them are dead. And she'll break down.

The only people who call are her parents. They worry about her, as all parents would. She never knows what to say to them. Everything is fucked up, and she can't bring herself to drop the time reversal bomb on them. It kills her, lying to her parents, telling them she's making progress, but it makes them happy, and that's the most she can do.

Max plays games on her phone to pass the time. Her contact list is scarce. She's been here for a few years now, and hardly has any friends, except for those guys a few flights down she occasionally joins for Friday night poker. Not even Chloe calls her, though she has her number. Just blows through her place like a hurricane on her own whim. Max doesn't know if Chloe made any friends either. What does she do most of the time? Get drunk? Get high? Party? Lay in bed and wonder how things ended up this way?

After her laundry in finished, Max goes home and folds it neatly into her drawer. She settles down onto the couch and turns on the television, eating some awful microwaveable meal and watching reality T.V. until she can at least doze for a while, or enter some hazy state between wakefulness and sleep. When she comes to, Chloe is rummaging through her cabinets. She comes back with half a bottle of bourbon and a bag of chips. Max sits up and makes room for her on the couch, which sags under the combined weight of them both. Chloe isn't hurt any worse than before, so Max supposes that is a small improvement. Her hands are messily wrapped to cover all of the split knuckles. "This show is awful," she comments, picking up the remote and opening the bag. "You know it's all scripted, right?"

"Everything's scripted these days." Max watches the swift changing of channels. The bright light makes her eyes burn. Nothing is on this late except for infomercials and home improvement shows.

"Probably because reality is five shades of fucked." Chloe settles into the couch with a grimace, her words hitching at the end. She tries to cover it with a smile towards the newlywed couple on screen looking for their first home.

Max draws her legs up underneath her. Her place is freezing and her toes are cold inside her thin socks. "I don't know. I think we would make a good Lifetime drama. Maybe they could even squeeze out a series."

This causes Chloe to take a big drink, which swallows her scoff of disbelief. "If it ever comes to that, please shoot me." She pauses as the words shatter in the air and shivers. "Sorry. I didn't mean that."

Max's heart races with the memories. So many things they have to tiptoe around. Something always links to the past, the place they are eternally drawn to. She thinks back to her junior year English class, when they had to read The Great Gatsby. How did it go again? _Boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past? _Or something of the sort. Well, it certainly rang true, in any case. After all, they had no future. Didn't know how to make one. The present was just a vessel for the past. "I know." Max settles down ever so gently onto Chloe's lap. After all these years, she's still as warm as a summer day.

What would have become of them, had everything turned out like it was supposed to? Would they have remained together or settled back down as friends? Would they have gotten married? Be like the couple on the television, brimming with excitement over the thought of starting their new life together? Maybe Max would have traveled the world while Chloe stayed in America. They could have talked to each other everyday, have heartfelt reunions. Maybe they would have drifted apart again. Maybe nothing would turn out good at all. For all she knows, it could have easily ended up this way, whether they saved Arcadia or not.

Chloe's fingers play with her hair, longer than it used to be, but still just a thick, just the same color. Max doesn't even know what they are anymore. Not friends. Not a couple. They just... were. Survivors. Living memorials. Max tries to relax into the touch. "What would have happened to us, if things were different?"

Chloe manages to small shrug. She licks her lips, hits the slowly scabbing split on the corner of her mouth. She has more piercing than before. More tattoos. Bright, colorful things that warn people to stay away. Danger. Toxic things lived here. "I don't know. Marriage probably. A dog and two cats. A nice one bedroom apartment somewhere warm and tropical." She cannot bring herself to look into Max's eyes. "But we're so far away from all of that. You deserve better than me."

Max does not want better.

She wants everyone to be alive again.

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It's not that Max doesn't like her job. She does. It's more than she could have asked for, more than most people her age probably have. But it isn't photography. Nothing can be a substitute for that. She desperately wishes she could pick up a camera without it burning her palms. Longs to be able to hold it up to her eye and take a picture without seeing the wasteland of Arcadia and all those people she let die in the viewfinder.

Max wants to go back so badly her bones ache, the feeling stealing her breath. But she knows that if she tries to reverse time that far back, she'll either end up in a permanent vegetative state, or dead.

She doesn't know if that would be better.

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It's Saturday night and Chloe stumbles into Max's place high and reeking of cigarettes. She brushes past her and into the bedroom, stripping down and falling into he rumpled sheets. After finishing her usual chaotic routine, Max follows, pulling on pajamas and slipping beneath the covers. Chloe's hand finds hers. It's startlingly cold, and Max turns to look at her. Chloe's slender digits are covered in rings. Without all her adornments, she is smaller, different. Less smug and casual, more contained and cautious.

Chloe brushes hair from her eyes. "It's all so fucked up." A tilt of the head. Open, honest eyes, too wide, too knowing, cutting through people and things. She always shines brightest at night, right before she is extinguished. "I shouldn't even exist anymore. You changed everything to save me. But I was still supposed to die. Would be dead, if not for seriously messed up circumstances."

"Changing everything means I changed your fate too. You're meant to be here."

Chloe's hand tightens around Max's. "That's bullshit and you know it. Even after all these years, I still can't stop thinking about it. Everyday I live is a day I'm not supposed to. I shouldn't be here. Every logical conclusion is that I should be dead. And I'm not." She laughs roughly, like sandpaper, a vaguely poisonous sound. "What does that make me? What am I? Who are we?"

"I don't know." Max cannot answer these questions. She doesn't know anything. Is not likely to know much at all. All she knows is that they are here right now. So she closes that distance, starts a kiss that turns into several. Chloe tastes like an ashtray, and there is a sad regret to the way she moves, like every breath is taking her farther and farther from herself. Her hands are up under Max's shirt, mouth on her jaw and working down, but Max pushes her back. She can feel the weight of this revelation, knows how much it means to Chloe. She's not that kind of asshole.

Chloe sits back on her heels, fingers cold against Max's ribs. "Look, don't worry about it. I shouldn't have even said anything. It's stupid. So goddamn stupid."

Except it wasn't, and they both know it. Chloe is the last thing Max has of Arcadia. They're both relics of the past they dream themselves back to. Things don't get better by drowning them. Shit is stubborn like that in all the worst ways. Max wants to help. She wants to talk about it. But she doesn't. She says, "Okay," and it's the only other means she has of forgetting besides getting hatefully drunk.

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The town still haunts them. They just never like to admit it. All the memories. All the potential. Wiped away. Friends: gone. Family: gone. The life they had before: gone. It was presumptuous of Max to believe she could ever stop the storm. But she'd still believed like she'd never believed before. All it got her was her heart swept away somewhere into the ocean like a twisted souvenir. The survivors still drag the ghosts of the city behind them by chains and salt-soaked debris. At least the phantoms were quiet and respectful in the morning.

No one liked to remember Arcadia. But the thought of forgetting terrified them.

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There is a monarch butterfly on the rim of Max's mug. It seems unperturbed by the steam curling around its wings, or the human inches from it. Its antennas twitch rhythmically. It almost seems as if it is trying to get its bearings. Max can relate. She is still trying to figure out her place in the world. The big, terrible, unforgiving world. "The last time I saw a butterfly this close, everything went to shit," Max informs the quiet creature. It flaps its wings lazily. "Don't you dare pull anything like that on me."

Her doors slams and she looks up. The butterfly vanishes. Max sets her mug down on the counter and moves to the living room to face Chloe. She bites her lip. "About last night... Do you honestly believe you're not meant to exist?"

"Don't play that game Max. We both know the truth." Chloe shakes her head, fingers combing through her hair. The muscles in her arms flex, making her tattoos dance in the low light. "I'm the one who caused that storm. I was supposed to die and I didn't. You never went back to let me bleed out. Arcadia was fucked from the moment you hit that fire alarm. It's fucked and all my fault. The life of one girl weighed against an entire town. It doesn't compare. It's not fucking fair. Why didn't you let me die?"

"Because I love you, and everyone deserves a chance. You act like there was never any way for both you and the town to survive, but I don't except that. There's just an option we didn't see." Max sits heavily on the couch. "If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I'm supposed to have all the options. All the time. Go back until everything is perfect. I didn't."

"Why not?"

"I can't. If I try, it will kill me."

A brutal silence falls. Chloe looks as if she is going to fall, but despite her shaking legs, she remains remains on her feet, finding interest in the carpet. Max feels drained, and her head is pounding. She wants to sleep for six months, but she is wide awake now. So it all came to a head, years after it should have. Everything out in the open at last. "There is a way to save you and the town. I know it. I know it more than I've ever known anything. But I couldn't find it. At least I saved one."

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It had been a slow sinking feeling that told Max that Chloe was the root of it all. But the universe had given her this mysterious ability, and she'd be damned if she didn't use it to save people. Chloe deserved to live as much as anyone else did. Had as much a right. There was no way in hell she was going to choose. She would repeat until she saved everyone. No matter the personal cost. But it all happened to fast, and by the time she could actually process what had happened, it was too late.

Arcadia Bay was gone.

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"We're already dead," Chloe tells her over the rim of their shared wine bottle one day. "I think we've been that way for a while. We don't know how to start living."

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So, they're sitting on swings in a park at night, and it is freezing. Chloe's jacket hangs around Max's shoulder and she clutches it closed. It's not exactly what Max imagined her life to be, but it is an improvement from spending her nights in her home, staring at her hand as if a swift time reversal could solve all her problems. The tip of Chloe's cigarette burns bright in the twilight. Max pushes at the sand, sends her seat softly swinging. They've been talking about the travesty of Arcadia in inconsistent increments, haltingly, drawing confessions from clenched teeth. But it's better, Max supposes. Better than holding it in. Better than drifting apart.

"I'm getting out," Chloe says, after an hour of silence and shivering.

"For real?"

"For good. I've got enough money." She blows smoke through her nose, leans back enough to look at the stars and hooks an arm around the cold chains. "I need to start over. This is no way to live and I want out."

"That's good." Max has always thought this place would end up killing Chloe, the way she was going on. Honestly, she thought it would end up killing them both. And it is, slowly, and they can feel it too, like poison in their guts. "Where are you going?"

"San Francisco, I think."

"Oh," Max draws the jacket together around herself. It smells like whiskey and the outdoors, and just a wayward hint of cinnamon. It blocks the cold well enough, but her nose is red, and her lungs are beginning to ache. "I've heard it's a beautiful city."

"Yeah. Seems as good a place as any to start, anyway." Chloe looks away from the sky, drops her cigarette and smothers it with the tip of her boot. She exhales, pushes her swing enough to start a small momentum. "I want to start over. Completely, y'know. I want you to come with me. I want to get this right."

"Escape together? How romantic."

Chloe smiles a that, this little quirk of the mouth that makes Max's heart skip a beat or three. "Quite. But you don't have to. I don't want to force you to leave. You have a life here."

"I have a habit here." Max twists the swing around so she is facing Chloe, who is hunched over, arms on her thighs. "I'll go. I need to get out too."

Chloe nods. She looks so relieved. They've been through so much together now. For better or worse, they were bonded for life. Silence falls in the wake of it all, with so much to say and all the wrong words to say it. They could work out the details later, in the warm confines of Max's place. Max grabs Chloe's hands, a compulsive piece of work. The wounds are healing. Poorly, very poorly, but healing none the less. Her longs fingers rest on the pulse in Max's wrist.

"You were worth saving," Max says. "Every time, you are always worth it. You have every right to exist."

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Maybe they were just a pair of restless old bones, never content to stay in one place. San Francisco had no guarantee of being permanent.

At least they could build a temporary home there.

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They wait until Max's lease is up, which gives them both time to save up money and pack. But as soon as they are able, they take off in Chloe's truck, only a step-up from her previous rust bucket. It is quiet and solemn. Some part of them is still stuck in the walls of that place, a lone, wandering piece of heart that will never go home. It is bittersweet in the way partings usually are. The last chapter in a book that will gather dust on a shelf. It rains for a good portion of the trip, and when the rain dries up, Max knows the destination they find themselves in before she even lays eyes on it. The lighthouse. Or, what is left of it, now that it has been reduced to mere rubble.

They make the trek in silence, sit upon the bench that has miraculously survived, and look at the wreckage they have created. It's hard. Hard to face. Max knows the layout of the city like an old friend, she can paint pictures of it in her dreams. She can pick out all the spots where people used to live, build houses the way they used to stand right down to color on the walls. Everything is gone. Nothing but weeds and plants grow there now, trying to cover the evidence for good. "Why are we here?" Max asks, voice raw. She promised herself she wouldn't cry if she ever saw Arcadia Bay again. She won't break that promise. She won't.

Chloe shrugs, leaning back against the worn out wooden planks, crossing her legs at the ankle. "To see, I guess. I haven't looked back since the day it all happened. If I'm going to get past this, I need to see it."

"It hurts," Max says. But she can't look away. "It's so painful. Do you remember?"

Chloe shake her head, that mess of hair. "I remember running, and then I woke up in your arms, and you were crying, and everything was so quiet."

Of course, Chloe knew the story. After, when they weren't too numbed to even think about, she demanded to know. When they tried to escape, a stray piece of debris hit Chloe, rendering her unconscious. Max had to drag her through the streets to relative safety. If she'd been thinking, she'd have reversed time and warned her. But desperate panic consumed her, and fear turned her to singular thoughts. So she just held Chloe tight and waited for the tornado to claim their lives. It never came. Sometimes she still waits for the end, and her heart will race, that sheer panic eating her alive. "It's better that you don't."

"I can't wrap my my around it. The fact that Arcadia Bay and everyone in it was still alive when I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, everything was gone. I never got to tell my mom I love her."

"I'm sorry." Max buries her face in Chloe's shoulder, feels her shaking beneath her. Her hand finds Chloe's, hold is close, holds it dear. A precious lifeline. She is warm despite the chill of early winter, a warm heart she tries to hide tucked safely away inside her clothes.

"So am I."

They sit like this until the sun begins to set fire to the wreckage of their past. A fitting memorial to such violent destruction. As it gets darker, Max holds Chloe closer. Seeing the town, or what once was, all over again is too surreal to comprehend. Part of her tries to hold onto the lie that it still exists, erects buildings and shops in place of the old, while another part repeats, with desperate conviction, that everything is gone. Gone like a morning fog, never to be repeated. Never to be seen again. When they finally decide to leave, Max doesn't feel any better. She spends the entire ride trying to reconcile what she has seen. Maybe in time, she will believe that things had to be the way they are. Maybe one day she can accept it.

But all she knows now is they are still looking into the past as if that can change it.

Still holding hands with ghosts and trying to tell themselves they're healing


End file.
